Pyonglywood: Inside North Korean Cinema

By Thibaut Bertrand & Laurent Weyl

North Korea is one of the most inaccessible and unknown countries in the world, and so is its cinema. Developed like an investigation, this documentary takes us to the other side of the 38th parallel, to discover unreleased – and even hidden – films.

How were they produced? Do they reflect the reality of life in this much-condemned country? Is there a rare gem among these feature-films – a masterpiece of the kind found in Soviet cinema? Would we even be able to recognize such a gem, and leave behind our Western gaze?